Where the Solos Last Till Dawn; With Endless Music and Open Jams, Smalls Stands Out Among Jazz Clubs Like a Blue Note in a Major Scale

By ARAM SINNREICH

Published: January 16, 2000

IT'S 2:30 on a Monday morning, and things are just getting under way. A jazz quintet is playing up in front of the small subterranean room, which is filled nearly to capacity. Candlelight reflects from the decorations on the wall: dim photographs of jazz legends from days gone by, odd sections of brass instruments oxidized by years of smoky air. Seated around small round tables or on padded benches along the wall, people bob in time to the music, smiling and humming between sips of beer.

No clear line divides performance from audience. Instead of playing on a stage, the musicians squeeze into a tiny area cleared around the beat-up baby grand piano. Even the band has blurry boundaries; halfway through a song, the tenor sax player hands his instrument to a man sitting on the sidelines. The man takes a solo without leaving his seat, then hands the sax back to his friend, who finishes the song with a reprise of the melody.

This is the eighth consecutive hour of music, and the fourth band. When the final set ends around 3:30 a.m., the last barrier between band and audience will fall. There will be an open jam session, and all comers are welcome to test their jazz mettle in public. The jam will continue until the music peters out or until dawn, whichever comes first. When the session finally ends, 12 straight hours of music will come to a close.

It is a marathon at most clubs, but just another night at Smalls.

In an age and a city where jazz is increasingly considered the realm of the elite, a quaint relic of a bygone era best preserved in the rarefied air of Lincoln Center or near-museums like Birdland and played only by a handful of revered masters and their humble acolytes, Smalls stands out like a blue note in a major scale. Few famous names grace its roster, and most of the players are under 30. And in the wee hours of a weekday night, when the band is hot and the air is full of smoke and sweat, the atmosphere is anything but rarefied.

If Smalls sounds like a bit of an anachronism, it is alive and real for the musicians who play there. In the five years since the club opened on West 10th Street, a block away from the noise and traffic of Seventh Avenue South, Smalls has become something of an institution among young jazz players and a growing number of jazz fanatics. And although the quality of the music varies from night to night, the club is, in the words of Ehud Asherie, a 20-year-old pianist who is one of the club's denizens, ''unique in the whole world.''

''There's no other jazz club like it, really,'' adds Mr. Asherie, who got his start at Smalls as a high school sophomore.

It is paradoxical that a club like Smalls should be such a rarity. For more than half a century, New York was the crucible where jazz was forged. Like an alloy of the city's many cultures, jazz was continually remolded into something new, thrown back into the furnace before it got a chance to harden. Change was the only constant, and experimentation was the key to change. From Harlem down to Midtown Manhattan and the Village, in clubs like Minton's Playhouse and the Onyx, musicians poured in when their money gigs were over, and then the real music would begin.

Mainstream acceptance of jazz contributed to the decline of this tradition. As musicians flocked to university jazz programs and audiences to upscale venues, most jam sessions were relegated to the status of amateur night.

Smalls turns this equation on its head. While no other club in New York City today offers the sheer volume of scheduled music Smalls does, it also far exceeds other jazz clubs in the amount of time dedicated to jam sessions. The four or five hours of music available at the more famous jazz spots in the neighborhood, like Sweet Basil and the Village Vanguard, pale in comparison to Smalls' all-nighters. While more established clubs often charge upward of $25 for an hourlong set, Smalls charges a flat fee for a night of music: $10. And while weekly jam sessions are virtually a given at jazz clubs of any size, only Smalls allows its guests to bring their instruments and play seven nights a week.

THE scores of young jazz fans who line up around the block on a chilly Friday night to get into Smalls probably aren't thinking about a dying New York tradition. But they do sense an aura of history about the club that belies its tender age.

''It's like the musicians are still here in spirit,'' says Amelie Develay, a slight, waifish-looking brunette who moved to New York from France last spring, as she scans the images of jazz greats enshrined on the wall. For Ms. Develay, 24, a freelance journalist, it's her first visit to Smalls, and she's entranced by the dinginess. ''It's nice because it's not a clean place,'' she says.

One table away, Phil Cappello, 22, a television reporter for RNN, a cable news network that serves the New York area, sits nursing a beer. ''This place has a pretty rich history,'' says Mr. Cappello, who has been a regular at Smalls since the club opened on the site of Lenny's Hideaway, a legendary gay bar from the 50's. And there's something else he likes. ''It doesn't seem to be gouging you at the door.''